BRITAIN will next week spearhead a global campaign to save endangered species such as elephants, rhinos and tigers by targeting the finances of the criminal chiefs ordering the poaching.

John Ingham with some of the items seized (Image: JONATHAN BUCKMASTER )

The illegal wildlife trade is worth more than £17billion a year - the fifth biggest category of organised crime in the world.

On Thursday a conference in London hosted by Environment Secretary Michael Gove is expected to set up a Finance Task Force under former Tory leader Lord Hague to turn the screw on the criminal masterminds behind it.

The illegal trade ranges from poaching of iconic animals to the destruction of rainforests and the harvesting of endangered orchids.

The 1,000 delegates who are coming to the conference from around the world will hear an impassioned plea from Prince William to unite to save the environment before it is too late Yesterday Environment Minister Therese Coffey told the Daily Express that as well as focusing on stopping poaching and reducing consumer demand, the conference will seek to turn the screw on the crooks getting rich from the trade.

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The shocking seizures were just a tiny fraction of that found by Britain’s Border Force (Image: JONATHAN BUCKMASTER)

The head of Border Force’s team countering wildlife smuggling, Grant Miller, showed me trophies ranging from the humdrum to the obscene and told of the lengths smugglers go to traffick their goods.

On the floor is a soft shell suitcase containing elephant tusks – one of four cases from Angola containing 242lb of tusks, the equivalent of 30 animals.

Framing the grisly haul are two elephant tusks, each more than 6ft long, found in a cargo plane.

There was a rhino horn, at least 18in tall, with the base hacked off.

The skulls on endangered wild animals are among the items smuggled in (Image: JONATHAN BUCKMASTER)

Mr Miller, who is also chairman of Interpol’s Wildlife Crime Working Group, said: “We found this rhino horn in a badly painted plaster cast of a Spanish flamenco dancer in a courier parcel from South Africa.

“We were immediately suspicious so we used the mobile X-ray, a hammer, and found the horn.

“Happily we don’t see too many rhino horns here but the world is losing rhinos to poachers at the rate of one every seven hours.” Mr Miller then showed me a rack of fur coats, made from bobcat, ocelot or otter.

He said: “I took the bobcat coat off a Russian prostitute in the old Terminal 2. She was wearing it as she came through customs.”

One case contained 242lb of tusks (Image: JONATHAN BUCKMASTER)

Mr Miller showed me a must-have fashion accessory for the empty-headed – a shatoosh shawl, made from the neck hair of Tibetan antelopes. For each shawl, worth about £7,000, 12 antelopes are killed.

He said: “You don’t find these with economy passengers. Their owners are usually up front in the plane or on their own plane. For me this is the most evil item in this room because the wool is provided in exchange for tiger parts – the killing of two iconic species fuelled by greed.”

In a corner was a wonder of nature – a 7ft-long horn from the unicorn of the seas, the narwhal whale, from Canada. Long and straight it spirals naturally to a sharp point – finer than anything a human craftsman could make.

“There was a box with spermaceti candles made from wax inside the head of a sperm whale. Just to give it reassuring authenticity, the box was from Nantucket, Massachusetts, and had a drawing of a sperm whale on the side.

Other items include guitars made from rare wood and ivory sculptures (Image: JONATHAN BUCKMASTER)

Mr Miller’s team is not only on the lookout for animals – dead or alive. Of the 36,000 species protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, 30,000 are plants.

On the shelves is a bottle of perfume containing the scent of oudh, a protected wood from the Far East.

It is a scent that lingers, unlike the forests that are hacked down.

There is a Union Jack guitar signed in good faith for a fan by Noel and Liam Gallagher but seized because its fretboard was made of protected rosewood.

And a two-ton consignment of body-building powder from America was impounded at Manchester Airport because its ingredients included an endangered orchid.